Thor

We're on the set of Avengers: Age of Ultron, inside the new Avengers Tower; formerly Stark Tower and now converted to a de facto headquarters for the Earth’s mightiest heroes. It’s all very sleek and shiny and pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a place Tony Stark calls home. Except now, it's a complete disaster. There's broken glass scattered across the floor. Furniture is destroyed. There are giant gashes in the wall. There's a production assistant dramatically swinging a giant cape around (the actors film their fight scenes without the cape, and the cape is added later in post-production).

I like to think I do a pretty good job keeping up with what's out on the stands, but somehow, some way, I managed to completely miss IDW's Ragnarok from Walt Simonson, Laura Martin, and John Workman, until just this week --- and believe me, I'm kicking myself for it. Ragnarok offers action-packed high adventure and sweeping storytelling from some of my favorite creators in comics, with a story that hooked me from the first page.

Of course, the bright side to coming late to the book is that I managed to catch up on the first three issues all at once rather than wait, and with how much I loved it, I'm pretty sure the bimonthly schedule that the book seems to be on would've been a nightmare. If you've been on the fence about picking up Ragnarok, here's five good reasons to give it a shot.

Although cosplay has been present for decades within the comics, anime, and sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, social media has played an integral role in the thriving communities of costuming that exist, such as Cosplay.com and the Superhero Costuming Forum. Over the years, the cosplay community has evolved into a creative outlet for many fans to establish and showcase some impressive feats of homemade disguise, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics at conventions.

In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.

With a movie the size of Avengers: Age of Ultron, we’ve been seeing a lot of promo art hit the ‘net in recent months. Obviously we’ve been a little more interested in new concepts, like Vision, Ultron, and the Hulkbuster Iron Man armor, and today brings even more promo art from Joss Whedon’s upcoming sequel, featuring all that and then some. And judging by some of this art, Ultron might just win his battle.

How well do you think you know Marvel's The Avengers? Did you catch the earlier appearance of that shawarma joint before the team had a celebratory chow down? Did you know the movie was initially three hours and 10 minutes? Well, we cover that and more in 'You Think You Know Movies?', an original video series from our friends at ScreenCrush that drops the knowledge on your favorite films.

Chris Evans and Chris Pratt have made a bet on the outcome of this weekend's Super Bowl that will see one of them show up at the other's choice of children's hospital or hospice in their Marvel superhero costume brandishing their rival's team colors. Either Captain America will carry the flag of Pratt's Seattle Seahawks, or Star-Lord will don the jersey of Evans's New England Patriots. We couldn't let this titanic tussle between two of Marvel's super-Chrisses pass by without a contest of our own, so we're pitting the worlds of Star-Lord and Captain America head-to-head in a series of polls that we call... the Superpoll.

Round two currently sees honors divided between the two heroes, with Red Skull and Redford claiming victories for Cap, and Kitty Pryde and the 1980s bringing it home for Peter Quill, but you still have time to make a difference. Today we pit the two heroes' teammates head-to-head in five rounds of titanic tussling, using a special matching algorithm (not really) to determine the fairest fights (we picked the match-ups we thought were the most fun). Welcome to the Superpoll: Round III.

Chris Hemsworth plays the movie version of Thor, who is a character in some comics. This was a game on a TV show. Someone threw water at Chris Hemsworth and his shirt got wet. It was a white shirt. He danced.

Phil Noto knows how to create a stylish retro vibe, and he can conjure up a soft-edged gauzy aesthetic that perfectly evokes the nostalgic familiarity of photographs from the 1960s and 70s. It's a talent that he exploited to beautiful effect in a series of pieces for his Tumblr that presented Silver Age Marvel heroes in the mode of old celebrity snaps from Life Magazine; the images that would have existed if these heroes had been real in the age they were created.

Those Tumblr images are the clear inspiration for a month of Phil Noto variant covers at Marvel this February, though the inspiration stretches beyond Life Magazine pastiches to cover hip-hop, fashion photography, and even candid personal images. Several of the covers were released this week courtesy of Marvel, Comic Vine, CBR and Newsarama, and they're a gorgeous selection of images, so we've collected them all in one place for your appreciation.

We're hoping for great things for Marguerite Sauvage in 2015. Though she's a much sought-after and award-winning commercial illustrator, her love of comics shone through in her fashion-forward Wonder Woman short for Sensation Comics, and her style -- which she described in our profile of her last month as "feminine, modern, a little sexy, soft, light and joyful" -- is a welcome breath of fresh air.

One of Sauvage's great strengths is her grasp of character, and that's in evidence in her portrayal of the Warriors Three on this variant cover for next year's Thor Annual #1, unveiled exclusively here on ComicsAlliance. Volstagg and Hogun look alarmed by the appearance of this new Goddess of Thunder, but it's Fandral's no doubt reflexive attempt at a smolder that really wins the day -- and makes us excited to see how that meeting is going to play out.

This week, we're talking about the Avengers, a team that you might've heard of thanks to a movie that made literally all the money in the entire world a few years ago. But while you might know all about Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and, uh, Thor, they weren't the only characters to fill those suits. This week, we dust off a few obscurities to show you other heroes who had those famous identities, from the good (Bucky Barnes as Captain America) to the best-left-forgotten. That's right -- it's TEEN TONY, Y'ALL!

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